Thursday, 12 June 2008

Elvis Costello Momofuku (4.5*)

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Times have certainly changed.

Forty-one years ago (more or less) I was rifling through the racks at an out of the way and long defunct music store in Townsville when I encountered a mysterious unlabelled double album that turned out to be Blonde on Blonde.

Not long after that I started buying overseas music magazines which may have been two months out of date by the time they arrived at my friendly (and also long defunct) newsagent but gave me enough time to go asking about the new Jethro Tull single before it was released in Australia.

Around the same time we started getting Australian music magazines that were much more up-to-date but you still needed overseas sources if your tastes steered away from the mainstream.

Now, of course, I access music news from that inexhaustible fount of almost all wisdom, the internet, where you can learn about all sorts of events almost before they’ve happened.

Like album releases.

These days you hear about the forthcoming release from your favourite through the rumour mill almost before they’ve finished the actual recording.

And the fan reactions often make intriguing reading.

What, Neil Young’s recording an anti-Bush album with a choir and a trumpet filling out the voice, guitar, bass and drums? You’re kidding. He’d never do anything like that....

That was Living With War.

What, Springsteen’s ditched the E Street Band and he’s cutting an album of traditional folkie stuff with something called the Seeger Sessions Band? Get outta here....

And he debuted the album and the band at Jazzfest in New Orleans. (Actually, a pedant might argue that it was at the Asbury Park Convention Hall, but that was credited as a rehearsal, rather than a public debut).

What, you say Elvis Costello’s recording a new album? Coming out on vinyl? Maybe not even on CD at all? Called Momofuku? What kinda name is that?

He has. It did. Publicity hype. Yep. Named after the guy who invented instant cup noodles.

Fittingly, it leads off with No Hiding Place a slice of invective aimed directly at today’s less-than-wonderful (in Elvis’ eyes) wired world from the increasingly jaundiced viewpoint of someone who at least remembers the days when he was an angry young man and still harbours shards of the resentment that powered much of his early work.

We are, after all, dealing with the guy who claimed, thirty years ago, that his major motivations were revenge and guilt. If the angry young man bit has been overdone over the years increasingly pissed-off middle-aged misanthrope might be a fair summary of the persona Costello has tended to display in interviews over the past few years.

But to me, the best thing about the album is the way the first couple of tracks bring albums like This Year’s Model, Armed Forces and Imperial Bedroom to mind. There’s plenty of venom in the wordplay, guitars crunch along and Steve Nieve’s keyboards add punctuation as they weave in and out of tunes, loaded with hook lines and layered vocals. In particular, you can hear plenty of This Year’s Model in American Gangster Time. There’s a great pounding rhythm running through Turpentine, where the backing vocals sound like they’ve been spread with a butter knife.

Track four, Harry Worth drops the tempo and heads off towards Clubland and The Long Honeymoon as the gravel of Costello’s lead vocal contrasts nicely with the oohs and aahs in the background. There’s plenty of space in the backing as well, making the track a pleasant contrast to the denser sound of the opening salvo.

That continues through Drum and Bone which sounds like it could have been an out-take from The Delivery Man with added layers of voices before the tempo drops for Flutter and Wow which, while it might not be your average common or garden ballad, at least lives in the same neighbourhood.

It’s back to almost-metal guitar crunch and keyboard swirls for Stella Hurt, which Costello used as his regular opening number through the May 2008 gigs opening for the reformed Police, then we’re into God’s Comic territory for Mr. Feathers before My Three Sons slips towards nostalgia as Costello finally lets sentiment sneak in.

A co-write with Rosanne Cash, Song For Rose evokes King of America before we’re back into The Delivery Man territory for Pardon Me Madam and Go Away where the Stax/Get Happy feel wraps up proceedings with the sort of ear-worm that listeners could well end up humming for the next couple of hours. Why don’t you come back baby? Why don’t you go away? indeed.

And while there are plenty of elements that evoke his earlier work, Momofuku works as a whole because the speed with which the components were assembled wouldn’t have left much time for critical analysis of what was going down. In fact, if Costello hadn’t been asked to contribute vocals to Jenny Lewis sessions, which included Imposters bassist Davey Faragher, we mightn’t have had an album at all.

Those sessions led to a call to drummer Pete Thomas and keyboardist Steve Nieve. A week in the studio with Jenny Lewis, Johnathan Rice and Tennessee Thomas (the drummer’s daughter) was enough to produce a product that stands with the best of Costello’s considerable catalogue.

Of course it’s highly likely Costello’s writing and performing interests will continue to be as wide-ranging as they have been throughout career that has twisted and turned through so many sectors of the musical landscape.

In the future we can expect more high art excursions into ballet, semi-classical music and jazz but it’s comforting to think that Costello’s got it in him to take a break from more serious projects and put together something that works as well as well as this set of songs does.

If the album isn’t the greatest thing he’s done, it’s a long way from the bottom of Costello’s, or anyone else’s, barrel.